How to safely back up and Restore your Outlook emails and contacts info

Outlook is the Microsoft’s email software. It allows users to have a better organized email system. Most of the Outlook users are people who received lots emails a day and have a lot of contacts. About 90% percent of US companies use Outlook as their email platform because it is reliable, customizable and compatible with other platforms. It is in fact a very powerful piece of software, being complex software includes problems and difficulties as well.

Users that have been using outlook for several years have accumulated hundreds or maybe thousands of important emails, important calendars, important contacts, etc. Their main fear is one day to loose every piece of their information, thus, it is extremely important to create backups on a regular basis. Does not matter how good you think your computer is, all the electronic devices are prone to fail. One of the most common computer parts to break is the Hard Drive. Unfortunately, all the Data of your computer including the Outlook is stored in the Hard Drive. If the Hard Drive dies, corrupts you will loose all you information. The question is, how to safely create an Outlook backup file.

There are 2 ways to safely backup Outlook Files.

1. Using Outlook Built-in Feature

In Outlook 2007 version, Go to the “File” Tab at the right top of the screen. Click on it that will bring down a submenu. Go to the option “Export and Import” and click. You will now see a new small window. There is different type of formats to export and import from and to. I recommend using the “.pst” format. Click on the second option “Export to a file”. Click next to go the following screen. On this screen we will choose the type of format. Go ahead and select “Personal Folder File(pst)” as the format. Then, click next and select the folders that you want to include in the backup. If you would like to backup everything, go ahead and check “Include Subfolders” Click next and go to the last step. Specify the location where you would like to save your backup. By the default Outlook will try to save it here “C:UsersAppDataLocalMicrosoftOutlookbackup.pst “but you can change the location. Click finish and now Outlook will create a Backup File, which can be saved, copied, e-mailed anywhere.

2. Manually finding the .pst File

If you are comfortable going through folders this option might the right one for you. Open my computer and follow this path C:Users AppDataLocalMicrosoftOutlookName.pst. In this location you will find all the Outlook files. Go ahead and select the PST file. Right click copy and paste the copy where you would like to save it. What you just did is created a duplicate of the Outlook file.

How to restore/put back the Backup files

1. Using Outlook Built-in Feature

You will proceed and follow the same steps you followed to export previously; but now, you will import the specific .pst File you want to recover. Just point outlook to the file and click next. Outlook will start populating all your emails, contacts, notes, calendars, etc.

2. Manually finding the .pst File

Go this location in your PC. C:Users AppDataLocalMicrosoftOutlook . Here you will paste the .pst file you want outlook to restore. By the default, Outlook looks for the files in this location. So, as long as the file is sitting in this folder, you are all set.

Simple as that, I highly recommend doing backups on a regular basis. You can make copies of the .pst files and save them in different locations to be safe. In this way, you will protect yourself from losing all your precious and priceless data.